Write an enlightening and logical essay 2000-2500 words long in which you identify a problem (social, political, economic, environmental) and make an argument about the best way to fix it. Your comple
Instructions
Write an enlightening and logical essay 2000-2500 words long in which you identify a problem (social, political, economic, environmental) and make an argument about the best way to fix it. Your completed essay should be submitted as a word document by midnight on Thursday, April 8.
Why do you have to write a research essay?
The research essay is an important component of post secondary education. You've probably heard a lot of people say "everyone has a right to an opinion," and this is true, but that doesn't mean that all opinions are equal. For instance, I have a lot more faith in Dr. Bonnie Henry's opinions on necessary health care measures during the Covid-19 epidemic than I do in my brother's opinions on the same subject, even though I love my brother and don't even know Dr. Henry. People who back up their opinions with credible knowledge have great value. If we don't have that knowledge ourselves, we must turn to the experts. In fact, we cannot further our collective knowledge unless each person takes seriously their obligation to look at other people's work before expressing an opinion. By writing a research essay, you learn how to do this. That is what universities were invented for: to bring people together to pursue truth, or something close to it, through careful study. If people did more research, we wouldn't be drowning in dangerous misinformation.
Choosing a Topic
Write about something that matters--don't waste your reader's time on a topic that's obvious or out of date. Since your essay is going to make an argument, a good topic will be one on which reasonable people disagree.
Narrow to something you can cover well in 2000-2500 words. This is a short paper by most standards. Think of how little you covered in your other assignments, and choose carefully. For instance, "We should do more to protect our forests" is a ginormous topic that you would need a book to explore, but "The provincial government should permanently ban open fires in parks" could be handled well in an essay of this length.
Research essays are meant to answer questions, so to help decide on a topic, start with questions that need answering. A question like "Should we save our forests?" isn't a very productive one because almost everyone will answer yes, which means there's not much left to say. A question like "How can we protect our forests?" is better because it produces a lot of answers. Any ONE of those answers could become the focus of a research essay of this length.
You may need to do a little preliminary research to decide what questions to ask and what answers to offer. That might get a little confusing, but it's part of the process. If you are having trouble narrowing your topic, please let me know and I will help you. Our librarians, who are research experts, are also happy to help.
Once you've narrowed your topic, your research will get easier. For instance, when I go to the library search page and type in "forests preservation," I get 34, 235 sources. When I narrow it down and type into the search page "forest fire bans," I get 563 sources. Which would you rather look through?
Please do some research and narrow your topic as much as possible before Monday, Nov 2. You will be meeting with me individually that week to discuss your topic, and the more specific you are about what you want to argue, the better advice you'll get.
Finding Sources
Your research essay should be backed up by at least six credible sources.
The best place to find sources is the Camosun College Library. The college library is a magical portal through which you can get access to magazine and journal articles, newspaper articles, videos, and books (electronic and old-fashioned paper). Through a process called "interlibrary loans," the college library can even get you stuff from other libraries. How cool is that?
The most wonderful thing about the college library is that it subscribes to many databases that offer you academic sources that you cannot find by searching the internet. Each database is like a big basket of research on countless topics, and the college pays for you to be allowed to explore what's in each basket. In particular, the college library gives you access to scholarly articles, and since these articles are "peer reviewed" (meaning they don't get published unless experts in the relevant field think they're valid), they are credible, which is crucial.
Besides leading you to good sources, the library has another advantage over the interwebs in general: It narrows down your options. When I Google "bullying schools Canada," I get 15,200,000 hits, organized by popularity or by advertising revenue, with lots of false links and sketchy data. When I enter the same words into the Camosun library search box, I get 3,309 sources, and they're all credible. You see how much easier that is?
But, the interwebs do have their uses, and some internet sources are reliable and even desirable. For example, if you need statistics about rates of prostate cancer in Canada, it's logical to start with the Canadian Cancer Society website. With websites, however, you have to do the work of evaluating credibility yourself. Remember that your credibility depends on that of your sources.
The library offers a lot of material on how to do research. Explore their website, and go to your "Week 6" module to link to some of their most useful material on how to do research..
What Makes a Source Credible?
It is written by an expert or authority (this is why scholarly sources are best).
It is published in a respected, professional journal, magazine, or by a respected book publisher, or on the website of a respected organization.
It draws upon credible sources itself.
It is recent (although this depends sometimes on the way you're using the source).
It is logical and well-written.
It is not biased, but note that "biased" does not mean having a strong opinion. Strong opinions are fine, as long as they are backed up by logic and honestly engage with counterarguments. "Biased" means having either a conflict of interest or an unfair prejudice. For example, if we want to know whether sugar is bad for kids, we don't ask the people at Hershey. If we want to know whether whether we have systematic racism in our justice system, we don't ask the Ku Klux Klan.
The best essays have a variety of sources and use mostly scholarly sources.
What to Beware Of
The Internet is awesome. It's also a cesspool of error, manipulation, and fakery. Use scholarly and verifiable sources as much as possible and watch out for misinformation.
And Wikipedia is not good enough. "What," you say? "I love Wikipedia!" I know, I love it too, but Wikipedia does not have the kind of quality control that sources created by identifiable experts have. Wikipedia is a good place to start because it will tell you the basics about a topic, but don't depend on Wikipedia for information and don't cite it as one of your sources. Instead, scroll to the end of the Wikipedia entry and check out their list of sources. There might be some good stuff there. The lists of sources that accompany your other research articles etc. may also be helpful.
Google Scholar will give you more credible and relevant sources that plain old Google, but those sources are often incomplete and are not as useful or as credible as what you will find via the library website.
Magazines can be great sources, but are not always the best sources for every topic. Magazines are directed at the general public, though they have different degrees of sophistication. A rule of thumb that can help you determine how credible a magazine article is: if it's long and complex, it's probably valuable. If it's short and simple, it probably isn't. This is especially true of magazine articles that report on scientific studies, for they must dumb down the information so much that it's no longer complete. Journals, on the other hand, are directed at scholars, which you became the day you enrolled in college. A journal is published by a reputable organization or by a university and can usually be accessed only through a library. Magazines are legitimate sources and often present excellent arguments, but remember that certain things, particularly scientific information, is simplified in those publications and might not be reliable. Here's a guide to the differences: Journals and Magazines.
Don't use sources if you cannot determine their credibility, especially if they are anonymous, meaning there is no author or organization attached to the source. If you think there's a good reason to quote an anonymous source, ask me about it, but remember that "some guy on the internet said" or "my roommate told me about this study she read about" does not inspire trust and respect in your reader.
Documenting Sources
It is important to keep in mind the dual purpose of documenting sources. First, you must give credit where credit is due. Not to do that is to plagiarise, which is a serious academic (and legal) infraction because people have a right to be acknowledged when anyone draws upon their ideas or their words. Second, you must make it easy for your readers to follow up on your sources. That way, you are contributing to the larger research community. So ask yourself two questions: 1) Have I made absolutely clear exactly which information came from which sources; 2) Have I given my reader the necessary information about the nature and location of the source?
Watch this mini-lecture to understand the role that integrity plays in writing an effective essay: Writing with Integrity: (Part 1) Gathering, Evaluating & Reading (Memorial University Library resource).
A bonus result of properly documenting sources is that citations make you more convincing. A long list of sources and careful references to those sources throughout an essay does a lot to boost your ethos because we know you've done the work and know what you're talking about. Every good source you cite makes it more likely that your reader will agree with your argument.
You will use MLA format to document your sources both in your works cited list and in the body of your essay. We will talk about this in class, but the library is the best place to get advice on MLA format. Check out this tutorial: MLA Citations and this nerdy video: MLA 8th Edition (Video)
For explanations and samples, this library citation guide is invaluable: MLA Style Guide.
The last page of your research essay will be titled Works Cited, and that will be a list of every source you have used in the paper. There should be nothing in that list that wasn't used in the essay, and everything used in the essay must be in that list. Look here for an examaple of a Works Cited page: Sample Works Cited.
There are a number of online programs that will help you format citations for your Works Cited lists. Like all such programs, they're only as good as the input you provide, and they do not always get everything right, so make sure you proofread the results they give you. When you find a source via Camosun College, the source comes with a link to an MLA citation which you can copy and paste into your page.
Don't panic about the details like commas and italics at this stage, but do try to create a proper list of sources as you go. It will save you time later.
Remember the Community
A research essay should be like a conversation: respectful, balanced, responsive, and interesting. You already know the rules to participating in a conversation: don't ignore what other people have said; don't merely repeat what other people have said without giving them credit; show that you have understood what other people have said; try to add something to what other people have said. This can be intimidating for a college student ("how can I weigh in when I know so little?"). Remember this, your job is to take all those things other people have said and show your reader (remember--imagine your fellow classmates are your reader) why you side with some and not others. You won't just be providing a bunch of information; you'll be commenting on the quality and relevance of the information and arguments provided by others. You'll be wading into a disagreement,choosing a side, and persuading the reader to agree with you.
Criteria for the Essay
I will look for the following qualities in your finished essay:
an effective introduction that hooks the reader and leads logically to the thesis statement,
a clear, arguable, specific thesis statement at the end of the introduction,
a logical structure, with each paragraph having a separate job to do,
plenty of credible, specific evidence to support the argument,
effective refutation of important counterarguments,
strong logic, including avoidance of fallacies and unfounded assumptions,
an effective conclusion that closes the topic (without restating the main topics of the body paragraphs) and leaves the reader thoughtful,
quotations, summaries, and paraphrases of research sources,
careful explanations of the relevance of quotations, summaries, and paraphrases,
effective transitions between sentences and paragraphs,
ethical use of sources (that is, citing all ideas and examples drawn from others),
a works cited list of the sources you have used in your essay (no annotations necessary in the final list),
correct use of MLA format for presentation and documentation,
correct diction, grammar and spelling,
an interesting and informative title.
Please see the marking rubric attached to the assignment for a more detailed breakdown of requirements.
Talk to a Librarian
A librarian will be coming to our Collaborate session on October 14 to talk about using the library and citation and stuff. Make sure to attend that day.
You can consult individually with librarians about your research project via email, (online) appointment, or chat. You'll see links to these services on the bottom right of the Library Homepage.
Read Sample Essays
You will find three sample research essays in the "Week 6" module. These are all written by students, and reading them will help you see how a research essay can be effectively organized, well supported, and interesting.
The essays by Hart and Hunt were written by students taking 151 with me at Camosun and both received A+ grades. They are good models of success at the first-year level. Read them here: Sample Research Essay (Hart); Sample Research Essay (Hunt).
The essay by Charlton won an MLA Student Essay Award in 2019. It is a good model of success at the second-year level (next year for you!). Read it here: Sample Research Essay (Charlton) from the MLA Website .
